Category Archives: IRS White House Collusion

$6Billion in Fines for Rigging Currency

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Just pay the fine and no one goes to jail. Those that pay the billions in fines are the stockholders, there is never a personal or individual consequence. Jamie Dimon should have been in prison years ago, next to Bernie Madoff. Even more troubling is Jon Corzine with his criminal activity.

Attorney General, Loretta Lynch knows the depths of the fraudulent activity and seems to be complicit in giving individuals a blind-eye.

Big banks to pay $6B for market manipulation

Six of the biggest names in finance have agreed to pay nearly $6 billion dollars in penalties, with five pleading guilty to criminal charges over long-running manipulation of key financial markets.

The Justice Department announced the massive settlement Wednesday, its latest in a series of deals to bring to a close probes of financial manipulation of everything from benchmark interest rates to top currency exchanges.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the latest settlement brings to an end a manipulation scheme of “breathtaking flagrancy,” in which traders conspired to artificially alter currency exchange markets to obtain illicit profits.

U.S. authorities said that traders from competing banks frequently used chat rooms to conspire with each other to maximize profits for their institutions by manipulating currency trades, forming a group they dubbed “the cartel.” Dating back to 2007, Lynch said traders “acted as partners rather than competitors” in a “brazen display of collusion.”

The banks will pay the Justice Department and the Federal Reserve a total of $5.7 billion in criminal penalties, with most of the institutions also agreeing to plead guilty to some criminal charges.

Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan and the Royal Bank of Scotland all agreed to plead guilty to charges of conspiring to fix prices. UBS agreed to plead guilty to charges stemming from a previous investigation after the bank’s role in this new probe led the Justice Department to toss out a prior agreement not to seek criminal charges. Bank of America agreed to pay a fine as well.

The announcement is just the most recent in a string of settlements the government has struck with huge banks over industrywide bad behavior.

In April, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay a record $2.5 billion in fines, and fire several employees, for its role in rate-rigging. And in November, five large banks agreed to pay a combined $4.25 billion in penalties to U.S. and British authorities.

But those eye-popping numbers are unlikely to tamp down complaints from some lawmakers, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and from outside groups that complain the government has failed to bring charges against top executives for illegal activity at their banks. Rather, they contend banks are happy to continue paying large fines as the cost of doing business.

On Tuesday, UBS announced it will pay $545 million to settle claims that it was manipulating the foreign exchange market. The bank also noted that the Justice Department terminated a 2012 non-prosecution agreement it struck with the bank, which was part of a previous settlement over interest-rate-rigging where the bank paid $1.5 billion.

But the government argued that the new charges violated the terms of that deal.

While the bank faces no criminal charges from the recent currency probe, the bank agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud stemming from the previous rate-rigging investigation, and attributed the misbehavior to “a small number of employees.”

Bank CEOs Blame Currency Rigging on the Work of a Few Bad Apples

Wall Street’s biggest banks admitted Wednesday to rigging currency markets around the world. Within minutes of the Justice Department’s announcement, they were blaming it on a few rotten apples.

“I share the frustration of shareholders and colleagues that some individuals have once more brought our company and industry into disrepute,” Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer Antony Jenkins said in a statement announcing his bank’s guilty plea.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon also pointed a finger at a few currency traders.

“The lesson here is that the conduct of a small group of employees, or of even a single employee, can reflect badly on all of us,” Dimon said in a statement.

Dimon ran his bank during the length of the currency conspiracy, which the Justice Department said lasted from 2007 through 2013. Jenkins has been CEO of Barclays since 2012.

Barclays and JPMorgan were among banks that didn’t detect and address traders’ illegal cooperation to manipulate benchmark currency prices, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday. Among the clues they missed: an instant-message group called “The Cartel,” where dealers exchanged information on client orders and decided how to trade.

Under a $5.8 billion settlement, JPMorgan, Barclays and units of Citigroup Inc. and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros.

‘Ethical Behavior’

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a news conference in Washington that the investigation is continuing. The Justice Department may bring charges against individuals, according to people familiar with the matter.

“Fostering a culture of ethical behavior has been, and continues to be, a top priority” for Citigroup, CEO Michael Corbat said in a statement. He added that the bank’s “internal investigation has so far resulted in nine terminations and additional disciplinary actions.”

RBS pinned the blame for violating U.S. antitrust law on one currency trader. Still, Chairman Philip Hampton said that more people may have been involved.

“We have dismissed three people and suspended two more pending further investigation,” Hampton said in a statement.

MIT, Boston Financial Support for al Qaeda

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The Holyland Foundation trial in 2007, was a case proving domestic financial support for terror operations. Only selective documents from the trial have been released and the Justice Department refuses to declassify others. Why?

Some people were prosecuted, others were given a pass by Eric Holder. One would think this would have stopped all domestic terror operatives in the United States from supporting factions such as al Qaeda, Boko Haram or Islamic States. Well, not so much. In fact funding is quite robust today and out of locations and institutions that are well known and in cooperation with radical imams leading mosques across the country. Hello…..FBI where are you and why no investigation into mosque operations? That question has been asked and answered but where is the IRS?

Case in point as the light is shined on Massachusetts Institute of Technology..

MIT’s Muslim chaplain raised money for al-Qaeda groups

Everyone at MIT no doubt assumed that Laher was a “moderate.” To question that assumption would have been “Islamophobic.”

“Al Qaeda’s Base at MIT,” by Ilya Feoktistov and Charles Jacobs, Breitbart, May 11, 2015 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

At the end of April, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology unveiled a permanent memorial to MIT Police Officer Sean Collier. Officer Collier was gunned down by the Boston Marathon bombers, Chechen refugees Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, three days after they blew up the Marathon.

It is painful to learn that in the late 1990s, there were students at MIT who helped recruit for the Chechen jihad and raised funds for Al Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Tsarnaevs’ homeland. It is even more painful that the man who led this fundraising effort was still on MIT’s staff when Officer Collier was gunned down.

Suheil Laher had been MIT’s Muslim chaplain for almost 20 years. Today he continues to preach at the Islamic Society of Boston, the extremist mosque founded by MIT students near campus, where the Tsarnaevs worshipped during their radicalization.

Americans for Peace and Tolerance have just released a mini-documentary, “Al Qaeda’s Base at MIT,” showing how MIT Muslim chaplain Suheil Laher used his leadership of the MIT Muslim Students Association as a vehicle for raising money for Al Qaeda causes around the world. We especially focus on the Al Qaeda affiliate in Chechnya, which Laher and his associates lionized, even as MIT trusted him to be its Muslim students’ spiritual guide.

Suheil Laher came to MIT as a student in 1990 and by 1998, he became the MIT Muslim chaplain. By the year 2000, he also became president of a Muslim charity based in Boston called Care International, which was founded by Osama Bin Laden’s mentor Abdullah Azzam and was originally called “Al Kifah Refugee Center.” Care International was, in essence, a fundraising vehicle for mujahideen. After the leader of Al Kifah in Brooklyn, “the Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rehman, was convicted for his role in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Boston’s Care International took over as Al Qaeda’s main base in the United States. Laher, then, was quite an important figure in Al Qaeda’s leadership here. His perch at MIT meant that he had easy access to the best American Muslim minds – and their world-class technical skills.

As a religious scholar and an engineer, Laher was both the spiritual and technological leader of Care International. He pioneered the Jihadist use of the new Internet medium to fundraise and recruit for Al Qaeda causes online. Laher’s personal website prominently featured Abdullah Azzam’s notorious call to Jihad, a tract called “Join the Caravan:”

Beloved brother! Draw your sword, climb onto the back of your horse, and wipe the blemish off your ummah. If you do not take the responsibility, who then will?

That same Jihadist tract was found on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s computer.

Laher’s website contained a large collection of his writings and of sermons he gave in the Boston area. These sermons are replete with calls for Jihad, such as this passage:

When the Muslim lands are being attacked, and the Muslims are being raped and killed, the only solution prescribed by Allah is jihad. Jihad is for all times. […] Jihad does not stop. Those of us who have not yet managed to go and physically help our brothers and sisters should support […] our mujahidin brethren with prayer, with money, with clothes, by taking care of their families, and at some point in person. Otherwise, we must face the wrath of Allah.

One of the MIT students who answered Laher’s call to join the Jihad in person was a bright young biologist named Aafia Siddiqui. She started out as a passionate and prolific fundraiser for Care International, but by the time she was arrested by the FBI in Afghanistan in 2008, she was known as “Lady Al Qaeda” and had become the most wanted woman in the world. She is now serving an 86-year prison sentence for attempting to kill the FBI agents arresting her. Her belongings upon arrest included two pounds of cyanide and plans for mass casualty attacks on New York using chemical and biological weapons, as well as literature about the Ebola virus.

While Laher’s sermons preached the general Islamic obligation to do Jihad, Care International’s website along with its newsletter “Al Hussam” (“The Sword”) promoted what Laher and his fellow Care leaders saw as the concrete performance of that responsibility. In the late 1990s, Care International focused its fundraising activity on the Russian breakaway republic of Chechnya. Specifically, Care International backed the Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists under the leadership of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev.

Basayev can arguably be described as one of the cruelest Islamic terrorists in modern Jihadist history. Our documentary recounts one of his cruelest acts: the Beslan School Massacre. On September 1, 2004, during a ceremony marking the first day of school, Basayev’s men surrounded the school in the town of Beslan in southern Russia and took over 1,100 people hostage, nearly eight hundred of them children. They murdered several people on the spot in front of the children and herded everyone into a sweltering gymnasium, where the hostages were kept without food or water for three days as bombs were hung up from the rafters and basketball hoops above them. On the third day, the terrorists started setting off the bombs and Russian security forces stormed the school as shell-shocked children ran the other way and were shot in the back by the terrorists. Three hundred and eighty five people were murdered, among them one hundred and eighty six children. Subsequently, Shamil Basayev bragged about his “success” at Beslan and the fact that the attack only cost him 8,000 Euros to launch. He was killed by Russian security forces in 2006.

Care International raised huge amounts of money for jihad around Boston, $1.7 million according to Federal authorities. A large portion of this money came through checks that were specifically earmarked for “Chechen Muslim fighters.” Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, Care International hosted dispatches and communiques from Basayev and his forces in the field. A Care International “Al Hussam” newsletter praised a previous Basayev hostage operation against a Russian hospital’s maternity ward:

Minute by minute the whole world watched with agony, as some of the Mujahideen (not exceeding 80), under the leadership of Mujahid Shamil Basyev took 1500 Russians […] We cannot depend on anybody’s help; we have to fight evil with evil. The operation of the Mujahid Shamil Basayev is perfect proof.

How could MIT’s Muslim chaplain have led a group that applauded and funded such a savage?

In 2003, the FBI began investigating Care International for terrorism financing. At the same time, Basayev and his organization were designated as foreign terrorists. The flow of money from Boston to Chechnya stopped. After the Beslan Massacre, Basayev complained that the lack of funding prevented him from seizing more schools in Moscow and Leningrad. Because Basayev was not officially considered a terrorist before 2003, there was little the FBI could do to prosecute Laher and his fellow activists. Three Care leaders, including the group’s treasurer, received minor sentences for tax evasion. After being questioned by the FBI, Laher walked free and continued to influence students at MIT for more than another decade. His successor as MIT’s Muslim Chaplain, Hoda Elsharkawy, is herself closely linked through her husband to Laher and to Islamic extremism in Boston, which will be the focus of our future reporting.

While Laher officially stepped down from his post as MIT chaplain in 2014, he continues to preach at mosques in the Boston area, including the Tsarnaev’s own mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston – giving a sermon there as recently as May 1, 2015….

 

Lying to a Judge? Just Strip Their Law License

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The Department of Justice has employs more than 10,000 lawyers and they have the money, personnel, resources and technology to ‘get-it-right’. But under Eric Holder, now replaced by Loretta Lynch, lawyers before the court in the immigration case obfuscated the truth and chose NOT to ‘get-it-right’. Simply states, it is malpractice with purpose. Strip their license..PERIOD.

No one will be disciplined, terminated or sanctioned..it just does not happen in the Federal government. So what happened before the judge? It should also be noted, obscure work at Justice goes on past midnight….hummm

Obama Administration Admits It Violated Judge’s Order to Halt Implementation of Immigration Plan

by: Hans von Spakovsky

In another midnight filing last week in the immigration lawsuit filed by 26 states against the Obama administration in the Southern District of Texas, the U.S. Justice Department admitted that the Department of Homeland Security had violated federal Judge Andrew Hanen’s Feb. 16 injunction against President Obama’s immigration amnesty plan.

This was not the first such admission by the government. It had previously filed an “Advisory” on March 3 informing Judge Hanen that between Nov. 20, 2014, when the president announced his immigration plan, and Feb. 16 when the injunction was issued, the Department of Homeland Security had begun implementing part of the president’s plan by issuing three-year deferrals to over 100,000 illegal aliens.

In other words, despite having told Judge Hanen both in court and in written pleadings that no part of the president’s plan was being implemented until late February at the earliest, government officials were doing exactly the opposite.

On April 7, Judge Hanen issued an order with a scathing analysis of the Justice Department’s misbehavior, finding that “attorneys for the government misrepresented the facts” to the court. He told the Justice Department that he expected all of the parties in the case, including the government, “to act in a forthright manner and not hide behind deceptive representations and half-truths.”

Hanen also gave the Justice Department lawyers a hard time over not having informed him immediately upon their discovery of this misrepresentation, saying that their claim that they took prompt, remedial action was “belied by the facts”—namely, that they waited over two weeks to tell the judge.

In the latest Advisory filed on May 7, the Justice Department informed Hanen that the Department of Homeland Security “sent three-year work authorizations after the Court had issued its injunction” to approximately 2,000 individuals. This time, the Justice Department lawyers assert they only found out about the violation of the injunction order the day before the filing.

They also say that Department of Homeland Security is in the process of converting “these three-year terms into two-year terms” and that Secretary Jeh Johnson has asked the “DHS Inspector General to investigate the issuance of these three-year [Employment Authorization Documents].”

In a separate, supplemental three-page order issued on May 8, Judge Hanen cites additional evidence to support his finding that the states have standing to challenge Obama’s immigration plan. In his Feb. 16 injunction order, Hanen referenced statements by Obama that there would be consequences for any Homeland Security employee who did not follow the requirements of the Nov. 20 amnesty plan. The Justice Department had tried to downplay the president’s statements.

However, Judge Hanen notes that while testifying on April 14—after the injunction was issued—before the House Judiciary Committee, Sarah Saldana, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “reiterated that any officer or agent who did not follow the dictates of the 2014 DHS Directive would face the entire gamut of possible employee sanctions, including termination.”

Hanen said that “the president’s statements have now been reaffirmed under oath by the very person in charge of immigration enforcement.”

Thus, according to Hanen, the government “has announced, and has now confirmed under oath, that it is pursuing a policy of mandatory non-compliance (with the [Immigration and Nationality Act]), and that any agent who seeks to enforce the duly-enacted immigration laws will face sanctions—which could include the loss of his or her job.”

It is this “clear abdication of the law by the government—a law that is only enforceable by the government and outside the province of the states” that gives the states standing to bring suit.

The latest actions by the government may make it even harder for Justice Department lawyers to convince the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Judge Hanen’s injunction.

 

Very Fitting Chicago Junk Rating, Obama Library

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For a sitting president to whine about the poor not getting enough money and to slam a media outlet over reporting ‘Obama-phones’, Chicago is the junk banner for Obama. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced his ‘War on Poverty’ plan where 50 years later, there is no question it failed about spending $22 TRILLION dollars.

The White House had economic advisors examine President Johnson’s plan and decided to re-tool it is all areas but of particular note in the ‘investment in and rebuilding hard-hit communities’. Obama announced ‘Promise Zones’.

The Promise Zones initiative will build on existing programs, including the Department of HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods and the Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhoods grant programs. The Administration has invested $248 million in Choice and $157 million in Promise since 2010. For every federal dollar spent, Choice Neighborhoods has attracted eight dollars of private and other investment and has developed nearly 100,000 units of mixed-income housing in 260 communities, ensuring that low-income residents can afford to continue living in their communities. Promise Neighborhoods grants are supporting approximately 50 communities representing more than 700 schools. To help leverage and sustain grant work, 1,000 national, state, and community organizations have signed-on to partner with a Promise Neighborhood site. By expanding these programs, the Administration continues to support local efforts to transform low-income urban, rural, and tribal communities across the country. *** Is Baltimore or Chicago or Detroit a ‘Promise Zone’? Chicago is no model in fact the city now carries a ‘junk’ status, and it is fitting that Obama has chosen to place his presidential library there. Cant make this up…

Moody’s downgrades Chicago debt to ‘junk’ with negative outlook

Moody’s downgraded Chicago’s credit rating down to junk level “Ba1” from “Baa2.” The announcement, which the ratings agency released Tuesday afternoon, cited a recent Illinois court ruling voiding state pension reforms. Moody’s said it saw a negative outlook for the city’s credit.

Following that May court decision, Moody’s said it believes that “the city’s options for curbing growth in its own unfunded pension liabilities have narrowed considerably.”

So let the fund-raising begin. More federal dollars and the launch of collusion for the Obama library.

Obama library likely to set off a fundraising frenzy

The announcement Tuesday that Barack Obama will build his presidential library in Chicago did more than excite the South Side of the city. It also kicked off what’s likely to become a fundraising frenzy.

Even if Obama doesn’t raise any money himself – as he pledged not to do while in office – independent analysts fear that fundraising on his behalf still might create conflicts of interest in his final two years in the White House.

 

“Is this a problem? Absolutely,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. “Even if he doesn’t solicit himself, (donors) are seeing all kinds of signals that this is a priority for him. It’s all a wink and a nod. … It buys access.”

The Barack Obama Foundation – a group composed of his longtime friends and supporters, including his former campaign manager and fundraiser – is expected to collect hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps rivaling the $700 million Obama raised to win the White House in the first place.

 

Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, said presidents should wait until they left office to raise money for their libraries. But most contributions come while a president is in office and most donations, he said, come from those who have issues pending before the administration.

“He’s doing this while he’s in office because he knows that will pull in the money,” Holman said. “It is very problematic. The conflict of interest is ever present.”

Donations will pay for the construction of the facility, which will be much more than a library: part museum, part education center and part archive, as well as a gift shop and restaurant. It will house enough unclassified documents to fill four 18-wheelers and enough artifacts to fill a swimming pool. Private contributions and taxpayers’ dollars will share the cost of maintenance after the doors open in 2020 or 2021.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday that the foundation had taken a number of steps to alleviate any potential fundraising problems, though he wasn’t aware of whether the White House had spoken to the foundation about that.

“Certainly the foundation was interested in living up to the very high standard that the president himself established,” he said.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama had considered two other states, Hawaii, where Obama was born, and New York, where he graduated from college. They settled on the University of Chicago, in the city where he launched his political career and met his wife, and they started their family.

“All the strands of my life came together and I really became a man when I moved to Chicago,” Obama said in a statement. “That’s where I was able to apply that early idealism to try to work in communities in public service. That’s where I met my wife. That’s where my children were born.”

In the last 24 hours surrounding the announcement, at least three emails were sent to previous Obama supporters about the library. “Over the next two years, you and I have the unique opportunity to help lay the groundwork for the foundation while the president is still in office,” said one from former senior adviser David Axelrod.

Coming up next from the foundation: an onslaught of phone solicitations, small-donor Internet appeals and discreet one-on-one conversations with the wealthiest of donors.

Foundation officials say they won’t accept donations from organizations that aren’t nonprofits, from individuals who are foreign nationals or from federal lobbyists.

James “Skip” Rutherford, dean of the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas, who played an influential role in the creation of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, said most library donors were past supporters of presidents or those who lived in the areas where the facilities were to be built.

Under current law, there are no fundraising restrictions for presidential libraries. Money can be raised while the president is still in office and contributors don’t need to be disclosed.

Obama’s foundation has pledged to release the names of those who contribute more than $200 on its website on a quarterly basis, though only with donation ranges and no further identifying information.

Since the foundation was created last year, several wealthy supporters have donated a total of roughly $3 million to $6 million. Many of them raised money for Obama during one of his campaigns or were appointed by him to various boards.

For years, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have considered whether presidential libraries should be required to disclose their donors. A pair of bipartisan bills is pending that would require the disclosure of contributions of more than $200 in an online searchable and downloadable format.

Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., said his bill would “bring sunlight to the presidential library fundraising process, helping to eliminate even the appearance of impropriety.”

As a senator and a candidate for president, Obama backed the disclosure of contributors and bundlers to presidential foundations.

Government watchdog groups say his foundation’s current disclosures don’t go far enough.

“It will be critically important that President Obama and his staff be completely transparent about their fundraising for the library over the next 19 months,” said Chris Gates, president of the Sunlight Foundation, which pushes for government openness. “The public has a right to know who is contributing to the library and what interests they may have with the federal government while he’s still in office.”

Thirteen presidential libraries operated by the National Archives and Records Administration are scattered across the nation, from Boston (John F. Kennedy) to Yorba Linda, Calif. (Richard Nixon).

Ronald Reagan’s library in Simi Valley, Calif., had been the most popular, with about 400,000 visitors annually. But the newest library, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, drew nearly 500,000 people last year, its first full year.

Obama’s library might very well surpass those numbers because of his historic tenure as the first African-American president in the United States.

 

DOJ Sends Bad Lawyers to Court, Good Thing

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Switchboard operator: Commissioner Koskinen, Loretta Lynch, Jack Lew, you are being paged to answer calls on lines 4,5 and 6.

Remember that pesky IRS targeting scandal that the White House said was phony? Remember groups that applied for tax exempt status were discriminated against at the direction of Lois Lerner? Remember Lerner going to the Department of Justice to get some legal advise when the IRS is actually under the Treasury Department who has lawyers and even the IRS has their own? Well, lawyers in Washington DC appear to have lousy skills at presenting an argument in this case…defense.

The DOJ actually argued it was okay to discriminate for a period of time. Really? Yes, discrimination IS fair….well not so much.

The IRS Goes to Court

The agency suggests it can discriminate for 270 days. Judges gasp.

It isn’t every day that judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals declare themselves “shocked.” But that happened on Monday when an animated three-judge panel eviscerated the IRS and Justice Department during oral argument in a case alleging the agency delayed the tax-exempt application of a pro-Israel group due to its policy views.

In December 2009, Pennsylvania-based Z Street applied for 501(c)(3) status to pursue its pro-Israel educational mission. In July 2010, when the group called to check on what was taking so long, an IRS agent said that auditors had been instructed to give special attention to groups connected with Israel, and that they had sent some of those applications to a special IRS unit for additional review.

Z Street sued the IRS for viewpoint discrimination (Z Street v. Koskinen), and in May 2014 a federal district judge rejected the IRS’s motion to dismiss. The IRS appealed, a maneuver that halted discovery that could prove to be highly embarrassing. Justice says Z Street’s case should be dismissed because the Anti-Injunction Act bars litigation about “the assessment or collection of tax.” Problem is, Z Street isn’t suing for its tax-exempt status. It’s suing on grounds that the IRS can’t discriminate based on point of view.

The three judges—Chief Judge Merrick Garland,David Tatel and David Sentelle—were incredulous. You say they want a tax exemption, but that’s not the complaint, Judge Sentelle admonished government lawyer Teresa McLaughlin: “They are not in court seeking to restrain the assessment or collection of a tax, they are in court seeking a constitutionally fair process.”

The suit should also be foreclosed, the government argued, because under Section 7428(b)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code groups may sue to obtain their tax-exempt status if no action has been taken for 270 days, and that should be an alternative to Z Street’s approach.

“You don’t really mean that, right? Because the next couple words would be the IRS is free to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint, religion, race [for 270 days]. You don’t actually think that?” Judge Garland said. “Imagine the IRS announces today a policy that says as follows: No application by a Jewish group or an African-American group will be considered until one day short of the period under the statute . . . Is it your view that that cannot be challenged?”

The judges also asked why the government had buried the key precedent in a footnote in its brief. In Direct Marketing Association v. Brohl, the Supreme Court decided that the language of the Anti-Injunction Act did not preclude cases like Z Street’s. In a previous case before the D.C. Circuit, Judge Garland noted, the court also “rejected” the exact arguments the government was making, “so in a way we have already decided every issue before us today, against you.”

Poor Ms. McLaughlin was sent to argue the indefensible so the IRS can delay discovery until the waning days of the Obama Administration. “If I were you, I would go back and ask your superiors whether they want us to represent that the government’s position in this case is that the government is free to unconstitutionally discriminate against its citizens for 270 days,” said Judge Garland.

Ms. McLaughlin replied, “Well, I will take that back.” The Beltway media may be bored, but the IRS scandal is a long way from over.